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TOM MOORE IN BERMUDA 

A Bit of Literary Gossip 




THpMAS Moore 
From S^ engraving by^eath after a mi mature hy Plimer 




Thomas Moorl. 
From on en ('raving by Anderson after Heath 





Tom Moore in Bermuda 



A Bit of Literary Gossip 



By 
J. C. L. CLARK 



SECOND EDITION 



BOSTON 
SMITH AND McCANCE 

IQOQ 






Copyright, i8py and /pop, 
by J. C. L. CLARK 

ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL, LONDON 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



©CI.A:^514()3 



The Plimpton Press, Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 
Published October, I pop 



TO 

MY MOTHER 

IN MEMORY OF ■ 
"BLAND BERMUDIAN DAYS" 



The tercentenary of the beginning of English settlement 
at Bermuda seems a suitable time for reissuing this mono- 
graph, which first appeared in 1897. Various inaccuracies 
of that modest pamphlet are here corrected, and some material 
gathered in the twelve years' interval has been made use of. 

In prefacing so slight a work it would be unbearably pompous 
to name in formal style all who have helped me in its prepara- 
tion. Yet all such, especially many good friends of mine at 
Bermuda, will, I trust, believe me grateful. 

Lancaster, Mass., 23 May, 1909. 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Thomas Moore ....... Frontispiece 

Engraving by Heath from a miniature by Andrew PHmer, prefixed to 

the second London edition of " Odes of Anacreon," 1802. 

"The second edition of Anacreon is published .... The print is 

universally thought to be like "... — Moore to his mother, 4 January, 

1802. 

Thomas Moore . Frontispiece 

Engraving by Alexander Anderson, after Heath, in Longworth's edition 
of " Odes of Anacreon," New York, 1805. 

Vignette from '' The poetical works of the late Thomas Little, Esq.," 

15th ed., 1822 . . ...... 13 

Autograph of Thomas Moore, 1805 ...... 13 

From a letter in the British Museum. 

Autograph of Francis, Earl of Moira . . ." . . 13 

From a letter. 

The Phaeton under Pico . . . . . . . . i^ 

Engraving by T. Tagg from a painting by WiUiam Anderson. " Epistles, 
odes, and other poems," 2d ed., 8vo, 1807 (the publication date on the 
plate is 18 Jan., 1808). A larger engraving of the same, by John Landseer, 
appeared in the ist ed., 4to, 1806. 

Colonel Hamilton's house, Norfolk, Virginia .... 19 
Redrawn from a sketch made by Benson J. Lossing, i January, 1865. 

Autograph of George Payne Rainsford James .... 20 
From a letter. 

Walsingham .......... 24 

Photograph by Lusher. 

Moore's calabash tree (1828) ....... 27' 

From " Sketches of Bermuda." By Richard Cotter, Purser, R. N. Lon- 
don, 1828. 



Moore's calabash tree (1897) . . . , . .27 

Photograph by Lusher. 

Autograph of Dudley Costello ....... 28 

By courtesy of Mr. Walter T. Spencer. 

From a commonplace-book of Moore's, containing a part of his jour- 
nal kept in the United States . . . . . . 31 

By courtesy of the Boston Public Library. 

"The few ladies that pass for white are to be sure the most unlovely 
pieces of crockery I ever set my eyes upon — 

"You must not be surprised, if I fall in love, with the first pretty face I 
see on my return home — for certainly the ' human face divine ' has de- 
generated wonderfully in these countries, & if I were a painter & wished 
to preserve my ideas of beauty immaculate, I would not suffer the brightest 
belle of to be my house-maid." 

These paragraphs appear to have been written at Norfolk; but the 
second did service in a letter written two months later, in which the 
word "Bermuda" supphes the blank. 

Hester Louisa Tucker ........ 33 

By courtesy of Mrs. Ernest A. McCallan. 

Hester Louisa Tucker ........ 33 

By courtesy of Miss Mary L. J. Hunter. 

Home of Hester Louisa Tucker, Water Street, St. George's, Bermuda 37 

Photograph by Fox. 

This was Mrs. Tucker's home from her marriage in 1803 till 18 10, 
when her husband purchased from the widow of President Henry Tucker 
the estate called Rose Hill. The ruins of the home of her girlhood are 
also pointed out at St. George's. 

Engraved title for "Odes to Nea" 41 

From "Epistles, odes, and other poems," 2d — 6th editions. 

The same plate, by Tagg, appears in an engraved title-page for the 

London edition (1853) of "Notes from the letters of Thomas Moore to 

his music. publisher, James Power." 

Tom Moore and Nea 41 

Engraving by William Riches. From a subscription edition of '* Moore's 
melodies and American poems," etc., issued at St. Louis and Boston in 
1874. The first edition of this compilation seems to have appeared in 
1866. 

10 



Autograph of Captain Basil Hall ...... 44 

From a letter. 

Buildings Bay ......... 47 

Photograph by Lusher. 

New York in 1805 54 '^- 

From the Naval chronicle, October, 18 10. 

Autograph of Mrs. Thomas Moore . . . . . . 56 

From a letter belonging to Mr. T. F. Dillon Croker, F. S. A. 

Thomas Moore . . . . . . - - - 57 

Pencil sketch attributed to Gilbert Stuart Newton, belonging to J. C. L. 
Clark. 

Autograph of James Kenney ....... 58 

From a letter, 1823. 

St. George's in 1816 ........ 62 

From a print by Stadt belonging to Mr. Joseph M. Hayward. 

Vignette from "Epistles, odes, and other poems," 6th ed., 1822 . 63 

Caricature of Moore by Thomas Crofton Croker ... 64 

From "Irish melodies," London, 1821. See also "Notes from the 
letters of Thomas Moore to his music publisher, James Power," London, 
1853 (suppressed); New York, 1854, page v. 



II 



" What a new interest and charm will be given to many of Moore's 
beautiful songs, when we are allowed to trace the feeling that inspired them, 
whether derived from some immediate and present impression; or from 
remembered emotion, that sometimes swells in the breast, like the heaving 
of the waves, when the winds are still!" 

Mrs. Jameson, 1829. 



" And all the bright creations fair 

That 'neath his master hand awake, 
Some in tears and some in smiles. 
Like Nea in the summer isles, 

Or Kathleen by the lonely lake, 
Round his radiant throne repair." 
Denis Florence MacCarthy: " The centenary of Moore.'^ 




TOM MOORE IN BERMUDA 

I 

Thoivias Moore, at the age of twenty, went over to London 
from his native Dubhn to enter himself at the Inner Temple 
and to publish a translation of Anacreon. This was followed 
by a collection of original verse, which appeared under the 
name of "Thomas Little."^ Moore's ^ 
wit and good-nature, and his poetic '^^^■»'*-^ ^-w^^l ^ 
genius, soon made him a favourite of society. 

Four years later, through the influence of the Earl of ]\Ioira, 
who as Lord Rawdon had won great distinction in the American 

war, and now stood high in the confi- 
dence of the Prince of Wales, the young 
poet was given the office of registrar 
of the court of vice-admiralty at 
Bermuda. He was pleased over the appointment, even to 

'These poems, which are almost all of an amatory character, I found 
thus catalogued ip an old Virginia newspaper: " On Julia weeping, Delia 
sleeping, Celia sighing, Chloe dying; on Peggy's dream, Sally's whim, 
Maria's breast, Nancy's crest, Molly's willow, Nelly's pillow, with a 
variety of others too tedious to mention." The "Poetical works of the 
late Thomas Little, Esq." was repubHshed as a single book for many 
years. The author of that singular work, "Prodigious!!! or, Childe Paddie 
in London," remarked in 1818: . . . "we still find them not suppressed, 
but in print, and in high sale; for it appears the listless and restless dissipa- 




Tom Moore in Bermuda 

such prosaic tasks as overhauling ship's accounts — that it 
was also the duty of a '^ registrar of the admiralty" to keep 
a record of all the admirals born is a delightfully fantastic 
conjecture of ''Mark Twain's." "It promised," as the late 
Charles Kent happily says, "to afford him the means of 
providing better than he could otherwise then have hoped 
to do for the four dearest beings to him upon earth — his 
parents and his sisters."" Besides, there was some idea 
that he was delicate, and for centuries Bermuda has been 
famous as a health resort.^ 

tion of ladies of ton, now-a-days, must have their several copies; one for 
the dressing-room, one for the carriage, one for the pillow, and one for the 
boudoir" (pp. 23-24). From the definitive edition of Moore's "Poetical 
works" (i84o-'4i) much objectionable matter in "Little" was omitted. 

^Works of Moore, centenary edition, p. xxiv. 

^Edmund Waller sang of "the Summer Islands" in verses first printed 
in 1645: 

" So sweet the air, so moderate the clime. 
None sickly lives, or dies before his time." 

One who sought health there in the early days of the colony was the 
Rev. Michael Wigglesworth, of Maiden, Massachusetts, author of "The 
day of doom." After the publication of that "sulphurous" poem, Mr. 
Wigglesworth, as he had long been of infirm body, "had a great mind to 
go to Bermuda." He set sail, accompanied by a friend, in September, 
1663. "It was a full month ere we got thither," he wrote, "by which 
long and tedious voyage no doubt but I received much hurt, and got so 
much cold as took away much of the benefit of that sweet and temperate 
air." In his later work, "Meat out of the eater," we perhaps may trace 
the recollection of that dismal voyage in such figures as, — 

"What if thou tossed art 
With boisterous winds and seas? 
Behold the haven where thou shalt 
Enjoy long rest and ease." 

He remained at Bermuda about seven and a half months. It is creditable 
to "that sweet and temperate air" that the pious rhymester lived over 

14 



c my e} 
my heart's farewell to the dea 
send I may r \ ground wiih 



lu nw 






■e amusea nunscii witn an '■iLpisuc lo nis inena \i\. 
^'^ -' •■ ' '- '-anslator of Camoens, written "aboard 



!ikc a silvery lake. 
calm, the ve 



by Lord ] 




The Phaeton under Pico 
Frmn an engraving by Tagg after a painting by Anderson 



Tom Moore in Bermuda 

Thursday, 22 September, 1803, saw Moore at Portsmouth, 
ready to sail on the Phaeton frigate — "this 'Phaeton that 
whipp'd me to the West,'" as he later wrote/ ''The wide 
sea before my eyes," says he in a letter to his mother, "I write 
my heart's farewell to the dear darlings at home. Heaven 
send I may return to English ground with pockets more heavy, 
and spirits not less light than I now leave it with. Every- 
thing has been arranged to my satisfaction. I am prepared 
with every comfort for the voyage, and a fair breese and a loud 
yo — yo — ye! are all that's now waiting to set me afloat."' 

The following Sunday the Phaeton quitted Spithead, bearing, 
besides Moore, another notable passenger in the person of 
Anthony Merry, the newly appointed minister to the United 
States, with his wife and suite. In a short week the frigate lay 
to under Pico in the Azores. While she lay becalmed, 
Moore amused himself with an "Epistle" to his friend Vis- 
count Strangford, the translator of Camoens, written "aboard 
the Phaeton frigate, off the Azores, by moonlight." It has 
this pretty description : 

"The sea is like a silvery lake, 

And, o'er its calm, the vessel glides 

forty years after his return to New England, married for the second and 
the third time, and begot several children. 

In his " Sacred theory of the earth" (1684) Dr. Thomas Burnet hazarded 
that " according to the Proportion of time they hold out there [at Bermuda], 
after they are arrived from other Parts, one may reasonably suppose that 
the Natives would live two hundred Years"! 

^"Epistles, odes, and other poems" (see note infra), page of " Errala." 

^"Memoirs, journal, and correspondence of Thomas Moore." Edited 
by Lord John Russell. 8 vols. London, i853-'56. Vol. i., p. 135. 

15 



Tom Moore in Bermuda 

Gently, as if it fear'd to wake 

The slumber of the silent tides! 
The only envious cloud that lowers, 

Hath hung its shade on Pico's height, 
Where dimly, mid the dusk, he towers, 

And scowling at this heav'n of light, 
Exults to see the infant storm 

Cling darkly round his giant form!"® 

Another week of calm was followed by boisterous weather. 
"I often thought," wrote Moore, "of my dear father's 'sea- 
room,' when we were rolling about on the vast Atlantic, with 
nothing of animated h'fe to be seen around us except now 
and then the beautiful little flying-fish, fluttering out of the 
water, or a fine large turtle asleep on the surface."^ The 
flying-fish he made the subject of verses* which breathe that 
simple religious faith which we often find expressed in his 
later poems. This is true also of the "Stanzas" written on 
this voyage, beginning, — 

"A beam of tranquillity smil'd in the West, 

The storms of the morning pursued us no more, 

And the wave, while it welcom'd the moment of rest, 

Still heav'd, as remembering ills that were o'er! 

*" Epistles, odes, and other poems." By Thomas Moore, Esq, London, 
printed for James Carpenter [by Charles Whittingham], 1806. 4to. Frontis- 
piece. Subsequent editions in two volumes, octavo, were published by 
Carpenter in 1807 (? 1808), '10, '14, '17, and '22. Some changes and 
omissions were made in the second edition. 

Most of the American poems, again revised, appeared in the second 
volume of Moore's collected "Poetical works" (10 vols., 1840- '41), under 
the title "Poems relating to America." 

^"Memoirs," vol. i., p. 139. 

*" Epistles," pp. 14-15. 

16 



Tom Moorr in Bermuda 

"Serenely my heart took the hue of the hour, 

Its passions were sleeping, were mute as the dead, 

And the spirit becalm'd but remember'd their power. 

As the billow the force of the gale that was fled!"* 

Moore confesses to no great liking for the sea; yet, in spite 
of the rough weather, the six weeks' voyage passed pleasantly. 
Every one was kind and attentive to him. He often dined 
with the ofhcers of the ship in the gun-room. ''Never," he 
exclaims, "was there a better hearted set of fellows ... I 
really felt a strong regret at lea^^ing them, — the more so, as 
it then for the first time appeared that I was going among 
strangers, who had no common medium of communion with 
me"^" . . . He was to learn, however, that his fame had 
preceded him: his songs, so popular at home, were not absent 
from Virginia spinets, and his poems were reprinted in the 
"periodical publications" of the country. 

""Epistles," p. 7. 
'""Memoirs," vol. i., pp. 137-8. 



17 



II 

At Norfolk, Virginia, whither he arrived 7 November, he 
remained some two months, waiting for a chance to cross to 
Bermuda on a man-of-war. Not only could he go more 
comfortably on one of his Majesty's ships, but save as well 
the twenty or thirty guineas he would have to pay for passage 
on a merchantman. At every opportunity he despatched 
to his mother letters full of tender solicitude. "Dear darlings 
at home!" he cries, "how incessantly I think of you: every 
night I dream that I am amongst you: sometimes I find you 
happy and smiling as I could wish: sometimes the picture is 
not so pleasant, and I awake unhappy, but surely Heaven 
protects you for me, and we shall meet and long be united and 
blessed together."" 

Introduced by Mr. Merry, Moore became the guest of 
Colonel John Hamilton, the British consul at Norfolk. Hamil- 
ton was a North Carolina Loyalist, who had served under 
Cornwallis in the Revolution. Unlike many of his fellows 
he had escaped confiscation of his estate, ^^ and, as consul, had 
won the genuine esteem of the Norfolk people. In June, 1807, 
when a mob, furious at the attack of the Leopard on the Chesa- 
peake, dragged the British flag through the dust in front of 
the consulate. Colonel Hamilton's personal popularity alone 

""Memoirs," vol. i., p. 143. 

'2" The history of South CaroHna in the Revolution, 1780 — 1783." By 
Edward McCrady, LL.D. New York and London, 1902. P. 586. 

18 



Tom Moore in Bermuda 

saved his home from destruction/^ On the outbreak of the 
war of 1812 he sought refuge in England. Moore describes 
him as "a plain and hospitable man, and his wife full of 
homely but com- 
fortable and gen- 
uine civility. " " 
Mrs. Hamilton 
had beautiful and 
abundant auburn . 

r 

hair, which great- '\ . 
ly excited the .-^ 
young poet's ad- 
miration.'"^ 

The Hamilton 
house stood on 
the southwest cor- 
ner of Main Street 
and King's Lane. 
Passing along this 
now squalid lane, 




Colonel Hamilton's house in 1865 



which connects Main and "Wide Water" Streets, one finds 
it hard to realise that it was once bordered by the Colonel's 

""The pictorial field book of the war of 1812." By Benson T Lossing 
New York, 1868. P. 685. 

""Memoirs, vol. i., p. 138. 

'^"Stanzas, by Thomas Moore, Esq. addressed to Mrs. H. ... at 
Norfolk, Virginia." The port folio (Philadelphia), 6 October, 1804; re- 
printed, with other miscellanea, at the end of Longworth's edition of 
** Odes of Anacreon" (New York, 1805), vol. ii., pp. 153-4. 

19 



„#: 



Tom Moore in Bermuda 

trim gardens. Fifty years later it was for a short time occupied 
by George "Prince Regent" James, the novehst, who was 
British consul for Virginia from 1852 to 1858/*^ 

Twenty-seven years before Moore's visit to Norfolk, during 




the attack by Lord Dunmore, the town had been burned to 
the ground. It was rebuilt chiefly of wood." The streets 

"Dr. Lossing, the historian, was entertained by G. P. R. James in the 
spring of 1853 in "a plain, old-fashioned house on Main Street." Mr. 
James told him that it was formerly the home of Colonel Hamilton, and 
that Tom Moore stayed there. (See "Tom Moore in America," Harper's 
magazine, September, 1877.) Twelve years later Lossing sketched the 
house for his "Field book of the war of 1812." A few years ago, Mr. 
George C. Reid, of Norfolk, wrote me with reference to this sketch: "The 
house at the corner of King's Lane and Main Street is the one represented 
. . . and is the one in which Mr. G. P. R. James lived a part. of the time 
he was in Norfolk. I can very well remember his living there, and have 
often heard that Thomas Moore was entertained there." Another life- 
long resident of Norfolk, Mr. Thomas B. Rowland, has informed me that 
his father told him Colonel Hamilton's residence stood on the west side 
of King's Lane. The house is now remodelled out of all likeness to its 
former appearance. 

•'"For when they independence gain'd. 
Returning back to what remain'd 
Of their depopulated town, . . . 
They'd ... on their ground, with haste and care, 
Each man his tenement repair; 
And to the chimneys, which yet stood. 
Again erect a house of wood: 
Thus rais'd once more the fair renown 
Of what was then call'd Chimney Town." 

"A poetical picture of America." By a Lady, London, 1809. P. 102, 

20 



Tom Moore in Bermuda 

were muddy and noisome. ^^ Shortly before his arrival the 
place had suffered a visitation of yellow fever/** Altogether 
it is not to be wondered at that "the capital of Virginia," as 
he calls it, did not please the traveller. 

"This Norfolk," he writes, "is a most strange place; nothing 
to be seen in the streets but dogs and negroes, and the few 
ladies that pass for white are to be sure the most unlovely 
pieces of crockery I ever set my eyes upon.""" He confesses, 
however, in verse, to tender glances exchanged across a ribbon- 
counter with a certain Caty, a fair Haytian exile. ^^ Again 
he exclaims: "Oh! if you saw the vehicles the people drive 
about in here, white coaches with black servants, and horses 
of no colour at all; it is really a most comical place. "^^ 

After all, lovers of the thriving Virginian port can afford 
to forgive these century-old sneers, however cheap and un- 
sympathetic. With Colonel Hamilton, Moore penetrated the 
Great Dismal Swamp — stretching far away to the southward 
into North Carolina — as far as Lake Drummond. This 
excursion, with a tragic legend belonging to that rather un- 
canny body of water, gave the impulse for the hauntingly 
pathetic ballad, "The Lake of the Dismal Swamp," one of 
the score or so of his poems that have stood the test of time. 

'^Charles William Janson in his "Stranger in America" (London, 1807) 
gives an appalling account of losing his shoe while trying to "ford the 
mud" near his boarding-house in Norfolk, and vainly "raking and drag- 
ging" for it the next morning (pp. 327-8). 

'""Epistles," p. 21, note. See also Janson, p. 328. 

'"" Memoirs," vol. i., p. 139. 

^'"Epistles," pp. 64-5. ""Memoirs," vol. i., p. 141. 

21 



Tom Moore in Bermuda 

A cold snap makes the poet long for Bermuda. He promises 

his sister, — "^ 

"... when the sun, with warmer smile, 
Shall light me to my destin'd isle, 
You shall have many a cowslip-bell 
Where Ariel slept, and many a shell, 
In which the gentle spirit drew 
From honey flowers the morning dew!"^* 

But, already, he realised that the uncertain hopes respecting 

the lucrativeness of his appointment were to be disappointed, 

except in the event of a war with Spain. In that case — 

"tow/ mieux pour Jeannette.^'^^ 

lo December Moore hailed with delight the arrival of the 

Driver, Captain Compton, a staunch sloop of war, built of 

cedar at Bermuda,^* and shortly to sail thither. 

23" To Miss M e. From Norfolk, in Virginia, November, 1803." 

("Epistles," pp. 16-23.) 

2<Moore several times alludes to the association with Bermuda of that 
"tricksy spirit" Ariel. "Among the many charms which Bermuda has 
for a poetic eye," he says in a note to his Epistle to Lady Donegall, "we 
cannot for an instant forget that it is the scene of Shakspeare's Tempest, 
and that here he conjured up the 'delicate Ariel,' who alone is worth the 
whole heaven of ancient mythology." Of course the plain suggestion of 
the hues, — 

" Safely in harbour 
Is the king's ship; in the deep nook, where once 
Thou call'dst me up at midnight to fetch dew 
From the still-vex'd Bermoothes, there she's hid" — 

is that Prospero's isle, whence he despatched Ariel on his faerie errand, 
lay far removed from the "Bermoothes." Shakspere, however, undoubt- 
edly took some incidents for his play from contemporary narratives of the 
wreck of the Sea -Venture at Bermuda in 1609, and the sojourn there of 
Sir George Somers and his companions. 

25" Memoirs," vol. i., p. 145. 

28" Epistles," p. 57, note. 

22 



Ill 

A MONTH later, after a passage of seven days, attended 

with "tremendous" weather, the Driver reached port. Moore 

thus describes the entrance into St. George's harbour: 

"The morn was lovely, every wave was still, 

When the first perfume of a cedar-hill 

Sweetly awak'd us, and with smiling charms, 

The fairy harbour woo'd us to its arms. 

Gently we stole, before the languid wind, 

Through plaintain shades, that like an awning twin'd 

And kiss'd on either side the wanton sails. 

Breathing our welcome to these vernal vales; 

While, far reflected o'er the wave serene 

Each wooded island shed so soft a green, 

That the enamour'd keel, with whispering play, 

Through liquid herbage seem'd to steal its way! 

Never did weary bark more sweetly ^lide. 

Or rest its anchor in a lovelier tide!"" 

But the enjoyment of his arrival at so desirable a haven 

was not increased by a nearer view of his office. In a letter 

to his mother, dated 19 January, 1804,^^ he says: "I shall 

tell you at once that it is not worth my while to remain here; 

that I shall just stop . . . till the spring months come in, 

when the passages home are always delightfully pleasant, and 

that then I shall get upon the wing to see my dear friends once 

more . . . even a Spanish war would make my income 

by no means worth staying for." He notes that "there are 

""Epistles," p. 44. 

=='" Memoirs," vol. i., pp. 148-152. 

23 



Tom Moore in Bermuda 

two American ships for trial, whose witnesses I have examined, 
and whose cause will be decided next month."-'' 

Sir Andrew Mitchell and his squadron were in winter 
quarters at Bermuda; and the admiral, writes Moore in another 
letter, "has insisted upon my making his table my own during 
my stay here."^" Tradition, however, lays especial stress 
upon his visits at Walsingham, the country-seat of Mr. Samuel 
Trott, later president of the council and acting governor of 
the colony. 

^"The summary proceedings against American ships, professedly en- 
gaged in neutral trade, by the British authorities was of course one of the 
principal causes of the war of 1812. Such a case, in which a cargo worth 
some thirty thousand dollars was confiscated, is reported at length in 
the pamphlet, "Proceedings of the trial of the ship Two Friends, in the 
court of vice admiralty in Bermuda" (Philadelphia, 1795). 

^""Memoirs," vol. i., p. 155. 



24 



Walsingham 



Lintrv-seat 



\vc colon 't 



IV 

Walsingham, famous for hospitality, belonged for genera- 
tions to the descendants of Perient Trott, a London merchant 
who in 1664 was "husband" of the Bermuda Company. 
The house stands, looking out across Castle Harbour, on a 
neck of land traversed by the highway from Hamilton to 
St. George's. Through an avenue of cedars one approaches 
the ancient homestead, near the shore, between two mangrove- 
bordered lakes. It is, says Mr. Bushell,^' "one of the oldest, 
if not the oldest, and undoubtedly the most interesting private 
residence in Bermuda . . . here may still be seen a specimen 
of the early style of house-building — upright cedar studs, 
with lath and plaster between." Like nearly all Bermuda 
buildings, walls and roof are of white-washed limestone. The 
high, empty rooms, with their woodwork of rich, dark cedar, 
the winding staircase, convey clearly the impression of former 
manorial ease and present loneliness and decay. 

From the house a foot-path leads through wooded grounds. 
Here the coffee-tree and the cherry, the lemon and the orange, 
mingle with the everywhere present cedar and oleander, and 
the myrtle clambers where it will. Tiny lakelets give back 
the blue of the summer sky. One may enter mysterious 
caverns, where the guide sets fire to a handful of dry palmetto 
leaves, and one sees, festooned with icicle-like stalactites, 

'*" Handbook of Bermuda," 1897. 

25 



Tom Moare in Bermuda 

which deep, Hmpid pools reflect, long galleries winding away 

underground.^" There, a veteran of its race, stands "Moore's 

calabash tree," still bearing on gnarled branches its green, 

oval gourds. It was of this tree that Moore wrote in the 

epistle to his friend "Joe" Atkinson :^^ 

'"The day -light is gone — but, before we depart, 
Here's a brimmer of love to the friend of my heart, 
To the friend who himself, is a chalice, a bowl 
In which Heaven has pour'd a rich bumper of soul!'^^ 

" 'Twas thus, by the shade of a calabash-tree, 
With a few, who could feel and remember like me. 
The charm, that to sweeten my goblet I threw, 
Was a sigh to the past and a blessing on you!" 

"The shade of the Calabash Tree," writes Richard Cotter, 
in his "Sketches of Bermuda" (1828), "mentioned in the 
writings of our celebrated poet, Moore, and which time appears 
only to have improved, is still the resting-place of the pic nic 
parties from St. George's and other parts of the Colony."^^ 
Years later Moore himself observed: "How truly politic it is 
in a poet to connect his verse with well-known and interesting 

^^ . . "the lime-tree grove that once was dear. 
The sunny wave, the bower, the breezy hill, 
The sparkling grotto" , . . 

"Epistles," p. 46. 
^"Epistles," p. 117. 
^^In the second edition this stanza runs: 

"'The daylight is gone — but, before we depart, 
One cup shall go round to the friend of my heart, 
To the kindest, the dearest, — oh! judge by the tear. 
That I shed while I name him, how kind and how dear!' " 
'^"Sketches of Bermuda, or Somers Islands." By Richard Cotter, 
Purser, R. N. London, 1828. P. 26. 

26 



West which I visit< 



entton but 



^ 




was br< 



Moore's Calabash 



.nius of the Place may lein 
hableness to which, in 



"Moore's calabash tree" (1897) 




Tom Moore in Bermuda 

localities ... I have myself, in more than one instance, 
very agreeably experienced. Among the memorials of this 
description, which, as I learn with pleasure and pride, still 
keep me remembered in some of those beautiful regions of the 
West which I visited, I shall mention but one slight instance, 




Moore's Calabash Tree (1828) 



as showing how potently the Genius of the Place may lend to 
song a life and imperishableness to which, in itself, it boasts 
no claim or pretension . . . lines in one of my Bermudian 
Poems . . still live in memory, I am told, on those fairy 
shores, connecting my name with the picturesque spot they 
describe, and the noble old tree which I believe still adorns it. 
One of the few treasures (of any kind) I possess, is a goblet 
formed of one of the fruit-shells of this remarkable tree, which 
was brought from Bermuda, a few years since, by Mr. Dudley 



Tom Moore in Bermuda 

Costello,^" and which that gentleman, having had it tastefully 
mounted as a goblet, very kindly presented to me."" 




President Trott, Moore's host, was the last of his race to 
own Walsingham. Without doubt years of too lavish hospi- 
tality ate deeply into his resources, for at his death the estate 
passed by forced sale to another family. 

^*In the '20's Dudley Costello (1803 — 1865), a man of charming per- 
sonahty, was for several years stationed at Bermuda as an ensign in the 
96th. There he delighted his friends by a manuscript newspaper, called 
the Grouper, after a Bermudian fish of rapacious habits. On his return 
to Europe, although encouraged by jNIoore, he vainly sought a publisher for 
a volume of sketches and descriptions of Bermuda. 

^'"Poetical works" (i84o-'4i), vol. ii., preface. Moore mentions the 
gift in his diary, 20 March, 1834 ("Memoirs," vol. vii., p. 28). "Bessy 
does nothing," he writes elsewhere, "but drive about, carrying it with 
her and exhibiting it to all her friends." 



28 



V 

It might have been at Walsingham that Moore wi-ote: 

"Close to my wooded bank below, 

In glassy calm the waters sleep, 
And to the sun-beam proudly show 

The coral rocks they love to steep! 
The fainting breeze of morning fails. 

The drowsy boat moves slowly past, 
And I can almost touch its sails 

That languish idly round the mast. 
The sun has now profusely given 
The flashes of a noontide heaven, 
And, as the wave reflects his beams, 
Another heaven its surface seems! 
Blue light and clouds of silvery tears 

So pictur'd o'er the waters lie 
That every languid bark appears 

To float along a burning sky!"^* 

"These little islands of Bermuda," he writes, with similar 
enthusiasm, in his letter of 19 January, "form certainly one of 
the prettiest and most romantic spots that I could ever have 
imagined, and the descriptions which represent it as like a 
place of fairy enchantment are very little beyond the truth. 
From my window now as I write, I can see five or six different 
islands, the most distant not a mile from the others, and sepa- 
rated by the clearest, sweetest coloured sea you can conceive; 
for the water here is so singularly transparent, that, in coming 
in, we could see the rocks under the ship quite plainly. These 

^*" Epistles," pp. 61-62. 

29 



Tom Moore in Bermuda 

little islands arc thickly covered with cedar groves, through 
the vistas of which you catch a few pretty white houses, which 
my poetical short-sightedness always transforms into temples '* 
. . . This poetically myopic fancy he elaborates in verse : 

"in every myrtle grove 

Secluded bashful, like a shrine of love, 
Some elfm mansion sparkled through the shade; 
And, while the foliage interposing play'd, 
Wreathing the structure into various grace, 
Fancy would love, in many a form, to trace 
The flowery capital, the shaft, the porch, 
And dream of temples, till her kindling torch 
Lighted me back to all the glorious days 
Of Attic genius; and I seem'd to gaze 
On marble, from the rich Pentelic mount, 
Gracing the umbrage of some Naiad's fount'V' 

and, many years later, was to draw the same picture in the 
description of the Vale of Cashmere in "Lalla Rookh": 

"Oh! to see it at sunset, — when warm o'er the Lake 

Its splendour at parting a summer eve throws, 
Like a bride, full of blushes, when ling'ring to take 

A last look of her mirror at night ere she goes! — 
When the shrines through the foliage are gleaming half shown, 
And each hallows the hour by some rites of its own." 

^^" Epistles," pp. 44-45. A Bermudian poet, Thomas Edward Nelmes, 
has described a similar scene in homeher verse: 

. . . "when the Sun was sinking in the West, 
And his last rays illumed each woody crest. 
Or, haply on the hills' green slopes delayed; 
And every valley lay in deepening shade; 
While thickly sprinkled over hill and plain 
And by the margin of the dimpled main. 
Oft half concealed o'er topping groves behind 
Of limes, palmettoes, and the pride of Ind, 
The white-washed cottages with smiling mien 
Seemed tell-tales of the happiness within ". . . 

30 



Tom Moore in Bermuda 



But the bright vision ends 
abruptly. No Nymphs and 
Graces (continues the letter) 
come tripping from the white- 
washed temple; but, "to my 
great disappointment, I find that 
a few miserable negroes is all 
'the bloomy flush of life' it has 
to boast of. Indeed, you must 
not be surprised, dear mother, 
if I fall in love with the first 
pretty face I see on my return 
home, for certainly the 'human 
face divine' has degenerated 
wonderfully in these countries; 
and if I were a painter, and 
wished to preserve my ideas of 
beauty immaculate, I would not 
suffer the brightest belle of 
Bermuda to be my house-maid." 




^ i <i 1 4>' 



31 



VI 

This too severe judgment was not Moore's last word on the 
subject. "The women of Bermuda," he says in a note to 
one of his "Epistles," "though not generally handsome, have 
an affectionate languor in their look and manner, which is 
always interesting. What the French imply by their epithet 
aimante seems very much the character of the young Bermudian 
girls — that predisposition to loving, which, without being 
awakened by any particular object, diffuses itself through 
the general manner in a tone of tenderness which never fails 
to fascinate."^" 

Probably one will not go far astray in tracing this change 
of heart to his acquaintance with two Bermudian girls whose 
combined — or respective — charms he celebrated in verses, 
half playful, half passionate, addressed to "Nea."^* We have 
Moore's word that there were "two real Neas"; tradition, 
however, and, no doubt, contemporary gossip, has identified 
the ideal fair one with Hester Louisa Tucker, the wife of Mr. 
William Tucker, a young merchant of St. George's. 

This young lady was the eldest child of Tudor Tucker, and 
of the sixth generation from George Tucker, an early settler 

^""Epistles," p. 95. 

"The motto of Moore's " Odes to Nea" is from the " Medea" of Euripi- 
des: via -c'jpavvsl:, "a new queen reigns." In other words — ofT with the 
old love, on with the new. Nea Slumberton, in Edward ^^'hitty's forgotten 
novel "P>iends of Bohemia," is perhaps a literary descendant of Moore's 
divinity. 

32 



and ...,,, V' ■ 

in 1742. Ho 

an oflfii lis 



A r.. 



brothci 
ist, both of w! 



ui J lie 




Hester Louisa Tucker ,..^,,.., 




Tom Moore in Bermuda 

of Bermuda, among whose descendants have been many persons 

of distinction. Her father, Tudor, was a son of St. George 

and Hester (Stowe) Tucker, of Bermuda, where he was born 

in 1742. He appears to have been 

an officer in the Royal navy. His 

first wife dying childless in 1784, he 

married i December of the same 

year, at the church of St. Lawrence 

Jewry in London, Mary Lamprey, ^^ 

of Stuizy, Kent, and by her had four 

children. ^^ Mr. Tucker died at 

Bermuda in November, 1800. Among 

his first cousins were Thomas Tudor 

Tucker, treasurer of the United States 

from 1 80 1 till his death in 1828, and 

his brother St. George, the Virginia 

jurist, both of whom emigrated to 

the southern colonies early in life 

and took the American side in the Revolution. 

Although, like a true sailor's daughter, she is said to have 
been born at sea, it is more than probable that the remem- 

"Daughter of John and Mary Lamprey, born at Frindsbury, Kent, in 
1757- 

"Hester Louisa, born 20 August, 1786 (baptised "Esther" Louisa at 
St. George's 17 December, 1786); St. George, born 1788; James Craw- 
ford, born 1 795 ; and EHza Bridger, born and died 1 796. The two daughters 
were doubtless named respectively for Mr. Tucker's mother and half- 
sister Elizabeth, wife of Bridger Goodrich, a Virginia Loyalist who in 
1778, at the age of twenty, commanded a British privateer fitted out at 
Bermuda. 




Hester Louisa Tucker 



2>^ 



Tom Moore in Bermuda 

bered experiences of Hester Tucker's rather short hfe were 
confined to the httle island colony. When, ii June, 1803, 
in the parish church at St. George's, she was married to William 
Tucker, she was not quite seventeen. The official witnesses 
of the ceremony were her mother and her father's cousin 
Henry Tucker, president of the council. The bridegroom, 
who was about five years her senior, she must have known from 
childhood, although they were only distantly, if at all, related. 

First seeing the light at St. Eustatius, one of the Dutch 
West Indies, early in 1781, William Tucker's origin is of 
some interest, connected as it is with one of the most disgrace- 
ful episodes in British naval history. 

His parents, Richard Tucker and Mary Foote, were married 
in 1759 by the rector of St. George's, ]\Ir. Alexander Richard- 
son,^"* who forty-four years later united their youngest son 
and pretty Hester. Having taken a medical course in London 
under Dr. Henry Watson, Richard Tucker settled as physician 
and trader in St. Eustatius, like many other Bermudians — 
Packwoods, Seons, Wingoods, Jenningses, Gilberts, Hills,. 

^^Excepting a short incumbency at St. Eustatius, Mr. Richardson was 
minister at St. George's continuously for nearly half a century. His 
private register and diary, now in the possession of his great-grandson and 
successor, the Rev. F. J. F. Lightbourn, has furnished me with some of 
the facts here set forth. The worthier qualities of this good man have been 
somewhat obscured by tales of the brutal practical jokes for which he had 
a weakness; yet a French visitor to Bermuda in 1793, Felix Carteaux, could 
write: "J'amais . . . beaucoup le ministre cure de Georges-Town. J'ai 
connu peu d'hommes plus sage que lui et d'un coeur plus compatissant. 
Son erudition ne s'etendait pas loin: il n'avait gueres lu que la Bible et 
quantite de sermons" ("Soirees bermudiennes," Bordeaux, 1802, p. 14) — 
a very agreeable picture, surely, of an old-fashioned clergyman. 

34 



Tom Moore in Bermuda 

Penistons, Perkinsons, Outerbridges, Burches, Burrowses — 
who were drawn thither by the unrivaled commercial advant- 
ages of the Dutch island as a free port; and there in 1780 he 
died, leaving by his will, besides other property, a house and 
land in Bermuda to his widow. William, a posthumous 
child, was baptised by the English pastor at St. Eustatius in 
March, 1781. England had just declared war against Holland; 
and, in February, Sir George Rodney had taken the island, and, 
not excepting British subjects, plundered the inhabitants of 
their wealth with frightful thoroughness. Leaving this scene 
of infamy behind, Mrs. Tucker speedily returned with her 
children to Bermuda. 

But in finding out who and of what condition were his lady- 
love of a day — and her lord, we have wandered far enough 
from Tom Moore, whose friendship with the girl-wife we 
may, in all sincerity, believe nothing worse than indiscreet. 
Prior to his marriage there is no reason to suppose Moore's 
life one of especial chastity; but doubtless a good deal of his 
license was merely on paper, and in this instance the cir- 
cumstantial evidence for acquittal seems convincing. In 
Bermuda "Nea" is regarded as a paragon of beauty and 
virtue. The "Odes to Nea," tainted as they are with the 
fashionable libidinosity of the time, were not intended as 
serious autobiography. Some of them could hardly have been 
addressed to Hester Tucker at all. Like the Trouveres of 
the twelfth century Moore made it somewhat of a religious 
duty to love. It was, however, natural that his open admi- 
ration should arouse the indignation, if not the jealousy, 

35 



Tom Moore in Bermuda 

of the one playing Albert to this not inconsolable Werther. 
The remoteness of the ''Odes to Nea," from actual occur- 
rences must be admitted, if one suppose Mr. Tucker to be 
the "other" alluded to in the following lines/^ It is not believ- 
able that Bermudian brides, in the year eighteen hundred and 
four, "oft" returned home at dawn under the protection of 
strange gallants. 

"Well — peace to thy heart, though another's it be, 
And health to thy cheek, though it bloom not for me! 
To-morrow, I sail for those cinnamon groves, 
Where nightly the ghost of the Carribee roves,*" 
And, far from thine eye, oh! perhaps I may yet 
Its seduction forgive and its splendour forget! 
Farewell to Bermuda, and long may the bloom 
Of the lemon and mwtle its vallies perfume; 
May spring to eternity hallow the shade. 
Where Ariel has warbled, and Waller has stray 'd!" 

^^" Epistles," pp. 95-96. 

""When I wrote these lines," says Moore, "I had some idea of leaving 
Bermuda and visiting the West-India Islands." 

"Sir J. H. Lefroy (" Memorials of the Bermudas," vol. ii., pp. 595-6) 
very satisfactorily disproved, by means of parliamentary records, Edmund 
Waller's legendary residence at Bermuda under the Commonwealth, which 
was indeed doubted by his early biographers Atterbury, Fenton, and Dr. 
Johnson. Lefroy also cites certain lines from Waller's " Battle of the Sum- 
mer Islands" as "evidence that the poem was written before the marriage 
of 'Sacharissa' to Robert Sydney, afterwards Earl of Leicester" {sic! 
Leicester was Lady Dorothy Sydney's father, not her husband). 
"No passion there in my free breast should move, 
None but the sweet and best of passions, love. 
There while I sing, if gentle love be by. 
That tunes my lute, and winds the strings so high, 
With the sweet sound of Sacharissa's name 
I'll make the listening savages grow tame." 
(Waller: " Poems," ed. Drury, p. 68.) " It cannot be supposed," Elijah Fen- 
ton rather primly obserA^es, "that Mr. Waller wou'd insinuate any remains 

3^ 




X 



•e told by th* 
>> iial my iieail. all t' 

A . of lime 

hether she was stately 
definite knowledge. Then 
it except two si 



ii/5rji8 .a':Toao:-i-r) .tP , 



Home or Hester Louisa Tucker 
St. George's, Bermuda 



Tom Moore in Bermuda 

And thou — when, at dawn, thou shalt happen to roam 
Through the lime-cover'd alley that leads to thy home, 
Where oft, when the dance and the revel were done, 
And the stars were beginning to fade in the sun, 
I have led thee along, and have told by the way 
What my heart all the night had been burning to say — 
Oh! think of the past — give a sigh to those times, 
And a blessing for me to that alley of limes!" 

Of Hetty Tucker's appearance, whether she was stately 

or petite, dark or fair, we have no definite knowledge. There 

are, I believe, no portraits of her extant except two silhouettes, 

belonging to descendants, which present a not unpleasing, but 

rather irregular, aquiline profile. Moore writes of "Nea" 

(but, as we shall see, there is always the difficulty of the two 

Neas), — 

of passion for the I^ady Dorothy after her marriage; the names of Sidney 
and Sacharissa were laid down together in 1639." The emphasis must, 
however, be laid on the allusion to "listening savages," which shows- 
clearly enough Waller's lack of acquaintance with the scene of his poem.. 
If Bermuda once had a savage population — the subject involves some nice 
questions of historical controversy — it was exterminated about the beginning 
of the sixteenth century, a hundred years before the island was settled by 
Englishmen. As Mr. Drury points out, Waller could hardly have orig- 
inated the story related in his mock-heroic verses — the attempt to capture 
two whales off the shore of "noble Warwick's share." Very likely he 
heard it told by some sea-faring friend. Similar combats are described 
in Cotter's " Sketches of Bermuda," pp. 56-60. 

The Waller myth received a local impetus through the discovery at 
Bermuda, many years ago, of what is alleged to have been the poet's 
"favourite ring." From varying accounts of the matter one might con- 
clude that two such rings had come to light there! It is, however, a well 
authenticated tradition, for information regarding which I am indebted 
to my friend Mrs. E. A. McCallan, that the finding of a ring bearing the 
initials "E. W." gave the name "Waller's Point" to a spot on the south 
shore of St. David's Island. The circumstance has, of course, no particular 
significance except as it illustrates the accidental character of popular 
nomenclature. 

37 



Tom Moore in Bermuda 

"Her eyelid's black and silken fringe 
Lay on her cheek, of vermil tinge", 
and, 

" Her dark hair fell in mazes bright "; 

and in reading the glowing lines of the " Odes" we remember 

that quick-dying vividness of colouring is often young beauty's 

sole asset : O formose puer, nimiwn ne crede colori. One learns 

that " Nea" danced well, — 

"Divinely through the graceful dance, 
You seem'd to float in silent song "; 

and in one of his letters Moore says that this is a common 

accomplishment with Bermudian women, though he wonders 

how the " poor creatures" manage it, since " they never have 

any instruction, except when some flying dancing-master, by 

the kindness of fortune, happens to be wrecked and driven 

ashore on the island."^* 

Miss Lloyd, who visited Bermuda as a member of the 

family of Archdeacon Spencer^^ twelve years after Mrs. 

Tucker's death, wrote of her: "I had the pleasure of being« 

introduced to the family of Nea, celebrated in Moore's Odes. 

Nea is no more, but she still lives in song, and in the fond 

recollection of her friends. From a likeness which I saw, 

I should judge her to have been a fine woman, but it is said 

that she was indebted for her fame less to her beauty, than to 

^*" Memoirs," vol. i., p. 155. 

"Aubrey George Spencer (1795-1872), son of the poet WiUiam Robert 
Spencer, was successively archdeacon of Bermuda, first bishop of New- 
foundland, and bishop of Jamaica. Moore's eighth "Epistle" ("Epistles," 
pp. 265-271), from Buffalo, was addressed to William Spencer, w-ho played 
an amusing part in his friend's affair of honour with Jeffrey in 1806. 

2>^ 



Tom Moore in Bermuda 

the fascination, and easy gracefulness of her manners. . . . 
Notwithstanding all the poetry associated with her name, 
Nea is represented, by those who knew her, as having been 
domestic in her habits, and exemplary in the discharge of all 
the social duties."^" This is an annoyingly prosaic description 
of a poetical heroine ; Miss Lloyd might be a zoologist describ- 
ing a rare specimen. But no one can regret that " Nea" like 
her famous prototype, at least in Thackeray's version of the 
tale of Werther and Charlotte, 

"Like a well-conducted person 

Went on cutting bread and butter." 

It has been a common belief that "Lines on seeing an infant 
in Nea's arms"^^ refer to Mrs. Tucker's eldest son. Miss 
Lloyd was told so in 1829." The verses, which Moore 
omitted from his collected works, ^^ have a certain florid grace. 

"The first ambrosial child of bliss, 

That Psyche to her bosom prest, 
Was not a brighter babe than this, 

Nor blush'd upon a loveher breast! 
His little snow-white fingers, straying 

Along her lip's luxuriant flower, 
Look'd like a flight of ringdoves placing, 

^""Sketches of Bermuda." By Susette Harriet Lloyd. London, 1835. 
Pp. 25-26. 

""Epistles," pp. loo-ioi. 

""I saw, also, her ['Nea's'] eldest son, on whom Moore wrote the lines 
beginning, 'The first ambrosial child of bHss.'" There can be no doubt 
whom Miss Lloyd means. She describes the reception of the archdeacon 
and his party at the home of WiUiam Tucker in the preceding paragraph. 

^^The final quatrain, indeed, disappeared in the second edition of the 
"Epistles." 

39 



J^om Moore in Bermuda 

Silvery, through a roseate bower! 
And when, to shade the playful boy, 

Her dark hair fell, in mazes bright, 
Oh! 'twas a type of stolen joy, 

'Twas love beneath the veil of night! 
Soft as she smil'd, he smil'd again; 

They seem'd so kindred in their charms 
That one might think, the babe had then 

Just budded in her blooming arms! 
He look'd like something form'd of air, 

Which she had utter 'd in a sigh; 
Like some young spirit, resting there, 

That late had wander'd from her eye!"^^ 

This eldest son of Hester was Richard Thomas Tucker, 
an honoured clergyman of Bermuda. It is related that he was 
once presented to the bishop of London by Archdeacon 
Spencer with the words, "My lord, 'the first ambrosial child 
of bliss'!" 

The truth of the foregoing anecdote there is no reason to 
doubt. Dr. Spencer's sources of information were the same 
as Miss Lloyd's. It seems rather unfeeling to mention, what 
family records show, that the Rev. Richard Tucker was born 
4 July, 1805, and "Nea's" first child, a daughter who died 
in infancy, in August, 1804 — both quite too late for the 
poem. 

""A spider a line of his net 

Had drawn, from one tree to another, 
And on it two sylphids had met. 

Having stole from the eye of their mother." 
— Parody of Moore by Eaton Stannard Barrett (i 786-1820): sung by "IMr. 
Little" in Barrett's novel, "Six weeks at Long's." 

40 








futlishei Ten li ISaS hy jamK Cdrftnltr- Old Boni SIretC 



iv; 



)siilt had been added 
feel in '^ he end 

of his 



remen-il-" AT 
a mnn 

uiracter 



I heaven 
l(,)oked at iier iiubuuna Ij. 



^b!1TV 



( r part of the 



Engraved title for "Odes to Nea" 



Tom Moore in Bermuda 

When, in iSo6, in "Epistles, odes, and other poems, "^' 
]\Ioore pubhshed thirteen somewhat perfervid ''Odes to Nea, 
written at Bermuda, "^*^ Hester's husband seems to have 
felt that insult had been added ta the former injury to his 
feelings, and to the end 
of his life he would never 
allow the works of the 
obnoxious bard in his 
house. ]Many still living 
remember j\Ir. Tucker as 
a man of imposing person 
and of fine character. 
Moore's traditional re- 
mark that when he gazed 
on " Nea " he thought 
of heaven, but when he 
looked at her husband he 
thought of the devil," can 
be set down to mutual, and 
comprehensible, prejudice. 




Tom Moore and Nea 

Fnvii an cm^^raviiis: hv Riches 



^^ Jeffrey's denunciation of this volume as immoral, in the Edinbiii-gh 
review, was the cause of Moore's bloodless duel with the great critic, — 
"That ever glorious, almost fatal fray, 
When Little's leadless pistol met his eye. 
And Bow-street ^Myrmidons stood laughing by." 
'^"In ^Moore's collected " Works" two of the " Odes to Nea" are omitted, 
one is found in another part of the volume, and others are much altered, 
notably the pretty "Dream of antiquity." In the poem beginning "If I 
were yonder wave," for four stanzas of nonsense is substituted, 
"Nor find I in creation aught 

Of bright, or beautiful, or rare, 



41 



Tom Moore in Bermuda 

Hester Tucker died, still young, in 1817, having borne her 
husband a large family. The following somewhat formal 
obituary notice appeared in the Bermuda gazette for 6 December 
of that year: 

"DIED 

"In St. George's, after a short illness, on the morning of 
the 2d instant, (aged 31 years), Mrs. HESTHER LOUISA 
TUCKER, Wife of William Tucker, Esq., a Member of 
Assembly, and also a Magistrate for that Town and Parish. 

"Possessing a most amiable and benevolent disposition, 
no one was more esteemed and beloved by her friends, when 
living, and no one has been more unfeignedly regretted and 
lamented by them after death, than Mrs. Tucker. 

"The unprecedented assemblage of persons of either sex, 
and of all ages and conditions, collected to pay the remains 

Sweet to the sense, or pure to thought, 
But thou art found reflected there", 
which I think is charming. As an instance of changes made in the interests 
of propriety one may cite, 

"Did not a frown from you reprove, 
Myriads of eyes to me were none; 
I should have — oh my only love! 

My life! what should I not have done?" 
the third and fourth lines of which appear in the "Works" thus: 
"Enough for me to win your love, 

And die upon the spot, when won"! 
As an afterthought of the elderly poet this desperate avowal has un- 
conscious humour. 

^'"The men of the island, I confess, are not very civilized; and the old 
philosopher, who imagined that, after this life, men would be changed 
into mules and women into turtle-doves, would find the metamorphosis 
in some degree anticipated at Bermuda." — "Epistles," p. 95, note. 

42 



Tom Moore in Bermuda 

the last sad tribute of respect, the tears which fell in sym- 
pathetic unison with those that graced the modest eulogy of 
the pulpit; and those unnumbered which bedewed her early 
grave, have sufficiently attested the merits of the deceased; 
and the Individuals who are more immediately affected by this 
dispensation of the Divine Providence, will, doubtless, find 
due consolation in the well-founded confidence, that as the 
Friend and Relative whose loss they deplore had lived here 
in the continued exercise of all the moral and social duties 
of the Woman and the Christian, so when her mortal frame 
was committed to its kindred dust, her Immortal Spirit, 

' pure, even as the besl are pure,' 

had already ' winged its way ' to those Mansions in the Heavens 
not made with hands, but prepared 'ere time was,' for the 
abode of the 'departed just made perfect,' there to reap the 
unfading, the never failing joys of an endless eternity." 

In the churchyard of old St. Peter's, at St. George's, is a 
limestone tomb marked "Mr. William Tucker's family vault"; 
and this one may suppose to be Hester Tucker's last resting- 
place. 

Mr. Tucker survived his "poor Hetty," as he was wont to 
allude to her, over fifty years, taking as a second wife a daughter 
of President Trott, of Walsingham. By one of time's little 
ironies two of his great-granddaughters bear the name of Nea, 
in memory of their ancestress's acquaintance with the man he 
detested. 

43 




VII 

At the period of Moore's brief experience as a colonial 
official, Basil Hall, later celebrated as a writer of books of 
travel, was a "middy" on his Majesty's ship Leandcr, which 
customarily wintered at Bermuda. 
Years afterward Captain Hall wrote: 
"The most pleasing and most exact 
description which I know of Bermuda 
is to be found in Moore's 'Odes 

and Epistles' . . . The reason why his account exceeds in 
beauty as well as in precision that of other men probably is, 
that the scenes described lie so much beyond the scope of 
ordinary observation in colder climates, and the feelings which 
they excite in the beholder are so much higher than those 
produced by the scenery we have been accustomed to look at, 
that, unless the imagination be deeply drawn upon, and the 
diction sustained at a correspondent pitch, the w^ords alone 
strike the ear, while the listener's fancy remains where it was. 
In ]\Ioore's account there is not only no exaggeration, but, on 
the contrary, a wonderful degree of temperance in the midst 
of a feast which, to his rich fancy, must have been peculiarly 
tempting"'^ — a dictum with which one must, I think, agree, 

ss" Fragments of voyages and travels" [first series]. 3 vols. Edinburgh, 
1831. Vol. ii., chap. vi. "These poems," says Hall, "happen also to 
have been written at the very time (1804) when I was myself on the spot, 
and when, with what little store of imagination any mid may be supposed 
to possess, I was feeling exactly as the poet did." 

44 



Tom Moore in Bermuda 

whether he care for Moore's style of poetry or not. In later 
times among the thousands who seek refuge at Bermuda 
from the rigours of the northern winter have been eminent 
writers — Mrs. Dorr, the gentle Warner, Mr. Scollard, Mr. 
Howells, Mr. Kipling; these, and others, have described its 
charms, in prose or in verse. But it is, after all, from passages 
in "Odes to Nea" and the "Epistles" to Lady Donegall and 
Moore's friends Morgan and Atkinson that one best realises 
the unique loveliness of Bermuda. Moore caught preeminently 
the right note. 

Except for this the "Odes to Nea" possess no very striking 
merit. They show the most marked characteristics of Moore's 
earlier poetry — the oriental voluptuousness of his fancy, his 
fondness for classical allusion, the triviality of his thought. 
He is still the "young Catullus of his day" -J"^ his lay is "sweet" 
and occasionally "immoral." An early American critic — - 
Joseph Dennie — praised the following lines for "an almost 
Arabian boldness of expression":"'' 

"Behold the leafy mangrove, bending 
O'er the waters blue and bright, 

^'Moore himself, when setting out on his travels, compares himself with 
''Verona's child of song, 
When flying from the Phrygian shore." 
"Childe Paddie" calls him "the modern Catullus," and another ferocious 
satirist — " F. J. Esq.," who put forth a small volume in 1806 — the 
"loose Catullus." Few writers have had more soubriquets than Moore. 

®''" Epistles, odes and other poems." By Thomas Moore, Esq. Second 
[American] edition. To which is prefixed, by the American editor, a 
notice, critical and biographical of the author. Philadelphia: published 
by John Watts. 1S06. P. xxxii. 

45 



Tom Moore in Bermuda 

Like Nea's silky lashes, lending 
Shadow to her eyes of light!"" 

One of the best of the ''Odes" is ''The Snow-Spirit": 

"No, ne'er did the wave in its element steep 

An island of lovelier charms; 
It blooms in the giant embrace of the deep. 

Like Hebe in Hercules' arms! 
The tint of your bowers is balm to the eye. 

Their melody balm to the ear; 
But the fiery planet of day is too nigh, 

And the Snow-Spirit never comes here! 

"The down from his wing is as white as the pearl 

Thy lips for their cabinet stole, 
And it falls on the green earth as melting, my girl, 

As a murmur of thine on the soul!'- 
Oh! fly to the clime, where he pillows the death. 

As he cradles the birth of the year; 
Bright are your bowers and balmy their breath. 

But the Snow-Spirit cannot come here! 

"How sweet to behold him, when borne on the gale, 

And brightening the bosom of morn, 
He flings, like the priest of Diana, a veil 

O'er the brow of each virginal thorn! 
Yet think not, the veil he so chillingly casts, 

Is the veil of a vestal severe; 
No, no, thou wilt see, what a moment it lasts, 

Should the Snow-Spirit ever come here! 

"1" Epistles," p. 98. 

«=The "Works" have: 

"The down from his wing is as white as the pearl 
That shines through thy lips when they part, 
And it falls on the green earth as melting, my girl. 
As a murmur of thine on the heart," 

46 



Oh! low 

i ii vviii apf)tiar' 



.! ;.: -■, /.,-.f- 

ere!"«* 



The hillrnvs I'iss i* 



1 ^ovjasiJjfl 



, otty eno> 
i(^ ;iic:;:' !':> for a later stanza of this rather oscillatory poei'; 

10 cull, with faltering ham!. 
'I on the golden sand, 



•- 11 liCC 1 1 1 



'.iu caiiuw sciiU- 



the sedate Moore of 
"-■ 'here ameii ' ' 
■ is'd it, a. 



Buildings Bay, Bermuda 



Tom Moore in Bermuda 

" But fly to his region — lay open tliy zone, 

And he'll weep all his brilliancy dim, 
To think that a bosom, as white as his own. 

Should not melt in the day-beam like him! 
Oh! lovely the print of those delicate feet 

O'er his luminous path will appear — 
Fly! my beloved! this island is sweet, 

But the Snow-Spirit cannot come here I ""^ 

Another commemorates a stroll with "Nea" beside 

"That little Bay, where winding in 
From ocean's rude and angry din, 

(As lovers steal to bHss), 
The billows kiss the shore, and then 
Flow calmly to the deep again. 
As though they did not kiss!"®^ — 

identified with Buildings Bay, at the eastern end of St. George's 

island, where, three hundred years ago, the ship-wrecked 

Somers built his cedar pinnace. The figure is pretty enough 

to make up for a later stanza of this rather osculatory poem: 

"I stoop'd to cull, with faltering hand, 
A shell that, on the golden sand, 

Before us faintly gleam'd; 
I rais'd it to your lips of dew. 
You kist the shell, I kist it too — 

Good heaven! how sweet it seem'd!""^ 

"Good heaven indeed!" one exclaims, ''could callow senti- 

"^^ Epistles," pp. 102-3. 
"" Epistles," p. 84. 

*^A performance which the sedate Moore of the "Works" scarcely 
approved, for we find the lines there amended — 

"I trembling rais'd it, and when you 
Had kist the shell, I kist it too — 
How sweet, how wrong it seem'd!" 

47 



Tom Moore in Bermuda 

mentality go further?" No minor poet of to-day could 
perpetrate stuff like this; but it should not be forgotten that 
the modern lyric was then still in the experimental stage. 
English romanticism was but finding its legs after its long 
sleep in the dark womb of eighteenth century formality. It 
is noteworthy that, in a letter \witten to Moore in 1838, Mary 
Shelley, referring to her husband's admiration for m.any of 
his songs and shorter poems, instanced "your unspeakably 
beautiful poems to Nea.'""* One must, however, agree with 
Amedee Pichot when he says: "Nea . . . ressemblait beau- 
coup aux Julia, aux Clara, aux Fanny et aux bcautes ano- 
nymes chantees naguere par Th. Little."" 

''Nea" then takes her place with the Julias, the Claras, and 
the Fannies: the young Tennyson, it may be remarked, left 
to posterity a similar, if less extensive, gallery. Moore wan- 

""" Memoirs," vol. vii., p. 251. 

^'That rather scurrilous divine, Henry Boyd — vicar of Rathfriland and 
translator of Dante — who seems to have hated Moore, wrote, less ])olitely, 
in 1809, — 

" 'Tis but a losing traffic 
To buy a place in such opprobrious niches 

With Delia, CeHa, Chloe, and such b s. . . . 

'Lord! how we apples swim,' he seems to say, 

As with the noble subjects of his lay 

The little grocer swums along 

The muddy stream of Sapphic song, 

With peeresses and peers 

Shaking his spaniel ears. 

Soon may Bermuda's strand admit the bevy! 
Qui Bavium non odet, amet tua carmina, Mcevi." 

48 



Tom Moore in Bermuda 

dered far and wide "in the flowery fields of amatory nonsense."^* 
Young men are, indeed, much ahke — one dear charmer 
succeeds another; but a writing young man of exceptional 
gifts records his infidelities unforgetably. 

^*The borrowed phrase probably belongs to the great Virginia editor, 
Thomas Ritchie: — "Let Mr. Moore wander, as long as he has wings to 
bear him, in the flowery fields of amatory nonsense. Busy little spirit! 
Let it rove from Nea to Susan, or from Fanny to Chloriss, from ' the bosom 
of a rose' to the bosom of his mistress" . . . (Richmond Enquirer, 30 
September, 1806) — very much the picture in Crofton Croker's caricature 
of ;Moore. 



49 



VIII 

Two rather dull anecdotes of Moore's life in Bermuda have 
come down to us — each with its pendant poem. 

He was very inquisitive — and he was morbidly afraid of 

mice. A young Bermudian lady, Miss Hinson, whom he 

often visited, learned his antipathy — which she evidently 

did not share ! — and decided to use it to punish him for 

prying. Expecting a call from Mr. INIoorc, she heroically 

secured a live mouse and locked it up in her work-box. Nor 

did her plot miscarry. Her guest was hardly seated when he 

began trying the lock of the box, and, on his raising the lid, 

out jumped the mouse into his lap. This episode is asserted 

to have ended the friendship, and that to Miss Hinson the 

lines were addressed : 

"When I lov'd you, I can't but allow 
I had many an exquisite minute; 
But the scorn that I feel for you now 
Hath even more luxury in it! 

"Thus, whether we're on or we're off, 
Some witchery seems to await you; 
To love you is pleasant enough, 

And, oh! 'tis dehcious to hate you!""" 

After all this seems to express rather a playful resentment. 

Like the fair Hester, Miss Hinson became a Mrs. Tucker. 

She is still remembered in old age as one of the last Bermudian 

ladies who travelled about in a sedan-chair. 

89" Epistles, p. 75. 

50 



Tom Moore in Bermuda 

Joseph Dennie's Philadelphia Port folio, a periodical which 
made the most of the vicinity of a famous British poet, contains 
in the issue for 14 July, 1804 — the number which announced 
the tragic death of Alexander Hamiilton — this editorial 
comment : 

"This brilliant specimen of the poetical powers of one, 
not more admired by his friends for the elegance of his litera- 
ture, than for the goodness and glow of his heart, was written 
while the author was at Bermuda, that Summer island which 
his favourite Waller has made to Hive in description, and look 
green in song.^ Mr. Moore being in company with a lady 
of the place, she playfully proffered him a ring. He gallantly 
replied in the following gallant verses. . . . 

'' No — Lady! — Lady! — keep the ring, 
Oh! think how many a future year 
Of placid smile and downy wing 
May sleep within its holy sphere. 

"Do not disturb their tranquil dream, 

Tho' love hath ne'er the mystery warm'd, 
Yet Heaven still sheds some soothing beam, 
To bless the bond itself hath form'd. 

"But then that eye! . . . that burning eye! 
O! it doth ask, with magic power, 
If Heav'n can ever bless the tie. 

Where love enwreaths no genial flower." 

And so forth, and so forth: "misunderstood" wives have long 
been favourite game for the sympathetic poet. By some stretch 
of the imagination one might connect this scarcely austere 

51 



Tom Moore in Bermuda 

poem — "The wedding ring" — with Hester Tucker, but 
for the fact that it appears in the "Epistles"'^" with the date 
1801, three years before Moore visited Bermuda! It will be 
recalled how Mr. Arthur Pendennis ''altered and adapted 
former poems in his possession, and which had been composed 
for a certain Miss Emily Fotheringay, for the use and to the 
Christian name of Miss Blanche Amory." 

'"Pp. 66-69. 



5^' 



IX 

But even love-making and ode-making, and the "innumer- 
able" dances of which he wrote home, with gay conceit, ''They 
threaten me here with impeachment, as being in a fair way to 
make bankrupts of the whole island. There has been nothing 
but gaiety since I came, and there never was such a 
juror for dissipation known in the town of St. George's before " ;^' 
even the grand turtle feasts of calipash and Madeira, could 
not long stay the mercurial poet. As his reason for quitting 
the unremunerative post, which was to be administered by a 
deputy, he is said to have assigned "a disorder in the chest"! 

Toward the end of April he sailed away on the Boston frigate, 
with the commander of which, John Erskine Douglas, he 
formed a life-long friendship. 7 May found him in New York, 
writing to his mother in the common tone of British tourists 
in America at that period: "Such a place! such people! 
barren and secluded as poor Bermuda is, I think it a paradise 
to any spot in' America that I have seen."^^ What interested 
him most was a glimpse of Jerome Bonaparte and his Ameri- 
can bride." 

'^"Memoirs," vol. i., p. 155. 

""Memoirs," vol. i., p. 159. 

"Almost twenty years later, during Moore's enforced absence from 
England, he made the acquaintance of ^ladame Bonaparte — a rejected 
wife, but an admired figure in European society. According to her biog- 
rapher, Mr. E. L. Didier, "the sentimental poet failed to attract her — a 
beautiful woman destitute of all sentiment." 

53 



Tom Moore in Bermuda 

Embarking once more upon the Boston, he revisited Norfolk, 
and bade good-bye to his friends there. Mrs. Hamilton, he 
says, "caught the way to my heart by calling herself my 




New York in 1805 

mother.^'' Thence he took the mail-coach for a journey north- 
ward. At Washington he helped the Merrys quarrel with 
President Jefferson. Mr. Dennie, the Hopkinsons, and their 
Federalist friends at Philadelphia lionised him to his heart's 
content. He was ''all rapture and amazement" at the Falls 
of Niagara. A chanson which he heard the rowers sing on his 
voyage down the St. Lawrence suggested the beautiful "Cana- 
dian boat-song." At Halifax he rejoined the Boston and, 
in October, sailed for England. 

NOTE. In an elaborate obituary of Moore, by Amedee Pichot, in the 
Rcvite hritanniqiie for March and April, 1852, occurs a sentence which I here 
translate: 'Trom Halifax the registrar went to spend a few more days at 
his post, and install a deputy in his place, reembarked for England, and 

54 



Tom Moore in Bermuda 

thanked his patrons there, believing that he owed to them the leisure of 
a sinecure." This assertion is repeated verbatim in the article on Moore 
in "Biographie universelle" (Michaud), vol. xxix., abridged by Pichot 
from his paper in the Revue. 

Pichot was a high authority on contemporary English writers. Besides 
the Revue article, he published a critique of Moore's works in his "Voyage 
historique et Htteraire en Angleterre et en Ecosse" (Paris, 1825), and 
translated "Lalla Rookh" into French. He congratulated himself in the 
Revue, alluding to the meagreness of the articles, called forth by Moore's 
death, in the British magazines, on having original material to draw upon. 
But in the impression that Moore twice visited Bermuda he was certainly 
mistaken; and as the statement is rather curiously reenforced by Bermudian 
tradition — ■ like most tradition quite unhampered by dates — it seems 
worth disproving. 

Twenty-one letters by Moore, covering his visit to America and the 
return voyage, have been printed. These form a rough itinerary of his 
journeyings. The following are to be found in the "Memoirs," vol. i., pp. 
137-177: To his mother, from Norfolk, 7 November, 1803; 28 November; 
2 December; 10 December; from Bermuda, 19 January, 1804; 24 January; 
17 February; 19 March; from New York, 7 May; "Aboard the Boston, 
Sandy Hook, thirty miles from New York," 11 May; from Baltimore, 11 
June, finished at Philadelphia, 16 June; from Passaick Falls, N. J., 26 June; 
from Saratoga, 10 July; from " Geneva, Genessee Country," N. Y., 17 July; 
from "Chippewa, Upper Canada," 22 July; from Niagara, 24 July, 
finished at Chippewa, 25 July; from Quebec, 20 August; from Windsor, 
Nova Scotia, 16 September; from "Plymouth, Old England once more," 
12 November. Two more appeared in the Critic (New York) for 2 June, 
1888: To Joseph Dennie, from New York, 2 July, 1804; from Hahfax, 
29 September. 

The date of the second letter to Mr. Dennie shows the impossibility of 
Pichot's statement. Moore reached Plymouth 12 November, 1804, never 
again to cross the Atlantic. The voyage occupied, he says, twenty-eight 
days, which makes the day of sailing 15 October — it was, to be exact, the 
14th. This leaves a fortnight for him to voyage from Halifax to Bermuda, 
spend some days there {" aller passer encore quelques jours a son poste^^), 
return to Halifax, and embark for home! Still — to exhaust the pos- 
sibilities — the Boston juight have called at Bermuda on her way to Eng- 
land; but we know she did nothing of the kind. Her log, preserved at the 
PubHc Record Office, shows that she took a northerly course: she was 
farthest south the second day out, in latitude 43° 26' N. 



55 



X 

Moore's experience in sinecure holding was dearly bought. 
His office was never in itself very profitable, nor was it, as he had 
once hoped it might be, a stepping-stone to higher political 
preferment. As, moreover, it was the direct cause to him of 
insolvency and exile, its disadvantages were not merely 
negative. In 1818 came the shocking intelligence that his 
agent at Bermuda had embezzled the proceeds of a ship and 
cargo. Later informations only made the matter worse. In 
July, 18 1 9, he recorded in his journal that the claims upon him 
appeared to be near six thousand pounds ;^^ and in September 
he was obliged to leave England to avoid imprisonment for 
debt. After some travel with Lord John Russell in Switzerland 
and Italy, where he visited Byron, he was rejoined by wife and 
children, and settled down near 

Paris to his usual life of work ^^^.^.^^^ ;^I-,— r^-ne^ 
and social diversion. In the 'c^ 

autumn of 1821 he arrived in 

England incognito, spent a week with his father and mother in 
Dublin, and returning to London found that friends had 
finally compromised the claims against him for a thousand 
pounds — of which an uncle of the defaulter, a rich London 
merchant, who had recommended "this precious deputy" to 
Moore, contributed three . hundred. Moore had steadily 
declined offers of assistance in his trouble, at last accepting, 
'^"Memoirs," vol. ii., p. 339. ..,: ■ 

56 



Tom Moore in Bermuda 

a loan from Lord Lansdowne ("that his generous impulse 
should not be wholly frustrated") only when able at once to 
repay it.'^ The whole episode testifies to his independence 
and worth. 




\ 

Pencil-sketch of Moore 
Altrihiited to Gilbert Stuart Newton 

While living in France he became acquainted with Wash- 
ington Irving and his friend Stuart Newton, the painter, to 
whom during the visit to London in 1821 Moore sat/® Irving 

""Memoirs," vol. iii., pp. 291-2. 

"An engraving by W. H. Watt, of Newton's rather stiff portrait was pub- 
lished in 1828. The sketch here given from the original in my possession 
we may also reasonably date about 182 1. 

57 



Tom Moore in Bermuda 

in his diary, i6 May, 1821, notes a conversation with Moore, 

in which he "told me that he was once giving Kenney" an 

account of his misfortunes; the heavy blow he sustained in 

consequence of the default of his 

agent in Bermuda, Kenney expressed /^/<7 — s 

the strongest sympathy. 'Gad, Sir, ^,/\/^ 

it's well you were a Poet; a Philoso- ^^""z/ 

pher never would have borne it.' "^^ 

One evening in 1822, before Moore's final return to England, 
he received a call from a naval gentleman, who "said with what 
delight he and his brother officers had read my Bermuda 
poems on the spot ; how they had looked for the little bay, &c. 
Told me that my pretty little friend Mrs. W. Tucker, was 
dead, and that they showed her grave at St. George's as being 
that of 'Nea.' "^^ Nearly twenty years later he received from 
his friend Moran an extract from Miss Lloyd's "Sketches" 
concerning her introduction to "the family of Nea." Moore— 
not having the context — wonders "whether they have hit upon 
the right Nea; though," he adds, "it would be rather hard 
for them to do so, as the ideal Nea of my 'Odes' was made out 

"James Kenney (1780 — 1849) was the author of "Raising the wind," 
"Sweethearts and wives," "The world" — of which Byron wrote: 
"Kenney's 'World' — ah! where is Kenney's wit? 
Tires the sad gallery, lulls the listless pit" — 
and other plays. 

""The life and letters of Washington Irving." By Pierre M. Irving, 
4 vols. New York, i862-'64. Vol. ii., p. 47. The same anecdote is told 
in Moore's " Memoirs," vol. iii., p. 169. 

^®" Memoirs," vol. iii., p. 359. 

58 



Tom Moore in Bermuda 

of two real ones."**^ No clue to the identity of Nea No. 2 has 
come to my knowledge — unless she were Miss Hinson of the 
mouse story. 

His post at Bermuda Moore retained in name till 1841, 
eleven years before his death, when, at the suggestion of the 
energetic Governor Reid,^^ he was superseded on the ground 
of continued non -residence.'' During the thirty-eight years 
he held the office he had been in the active discharge of its 
duties less than four months. Those were the Tite Barnacle 
days of the civil service. 

««" Memoirs," vol. vii., p. 288. 

^'Lieutenant-Colonel (later Major-General Sir) William Reid, the great 
meteorologist, governor of Bermuda 1839-1846. 

*"As no renewal of the appointment, which Moore had probably ceased to 
regard as of any importance, was obtained on the accession of Queen 
Victoria, it actually lapsed six months after the date of William I\'.'s 
death, 20 June, 1837. 7 September, 1841, the governor commissioned as 
Moore's successor S. G. Spencer, who had acted as deputy since 18 iq. 

For this information I am indebted to the courtesv of the Colonial Office. 



59 



XI 

Here and there in the "Irish melodies" are Hnes Hke these, 
in which it is not difficult to trace a reminiscence of Bermuda: 

"Never did Ariel's plume, 
At golden sunset, hover 
O'er such scenes of bloom" . . , 
"And when, in other climes, we meet 
Some isle or vale enchanting, 
Where all looks flow'ry, wild and sweet, 

And nought but love is wanting; 
We think how great had been our bliss, 

If Heav'n had but assign'd us 
To live and die in scenes like this, 
With some we've left behind us!" 

When, in the drawing-rooms of the great, Moore sang, — 

"Oh! had we some bright" little Isle of our own, 
In a blue summer ocean, far off and alone. 
Where a leaf never dies in the still-blooming bowers, 
And the bee banquets on through a whole year of flowers; 
Where the sun loves to pause 

With so fond a delay. 
That the night only draws 
A thin veil o'er the day; 
Where simply to feel that we breathe, that we live, 
Is worth the best joy that life elsewhere can give!" 

he may well have recalled Bermuda — that lonely, ever-verdant 

isle, with its quick-changing skies, and rose-tinted sands 

washed by delicate blue waters. 

"^In Moore's manuscript, kindly lent me by Mr. T. F. Dillon Croker, 
"blest." 

60 



Tom Moore in Bermuda 

In a letter to his mother, wi'itten in 1804, soon after his 
arrival at New York, he expressed the same thoughts, long 
afterward embodied in musical verse. "When I left Bermuda," 
he says, "I could not help regretting that the hopes which took 
me thither could not be even half realised, for I should love to 
live there, and you would like it too, dear mother; and I think, 
if the situation would give me but a fourth of what I was so 
deludingly taught to expect, you should all have come to me; 
and though set apart from the rest oj the world, we should have 
found in that quiet spot, and under that sweet sky, quite enough 
to counterbalance what the rest of the world could give us.'^^^ 
Such dreams come at times to most men; but to Moore, born 
man of society, one cannot doubt that life on a remote semi- 
tropical island, however idyllic, would in the end have become 
a tedious exile. 

*^'' Alemoirs," vol. i., p. 160. The italics are mine. 



61 



XII 

Moore's prestige as a poet has passed, though not so com- 
pletely as age-end critics of the last century imagined. Taste 
has, none the less, changed since the youth of the old lady in 
Wilkie Collins's novel who "knew Tom Moore by heart," and 
thought that for the moon to hide her light 

"When to Eveleen's bower 
The Lord of the Valley with false vows came" 

was the only proper thing for the moon to do, because Tom 
Moore wrote it that way. But for one not wholly possessed 
by the Zeitgeist which regards not the bard of Erin, 
memories of the light-hearted minstrel yet linger about the 
island whose unchanging beauties he celebrated more than a 
century ago. As one strolls along a cedar-shaded road it seems 
not too impossible to meet Mr. Moore, the new registrar of 
the admiralty court, riding out into "the country parts of 
the island ... to swear a man to the truth of a Dutch in- 
voice he had translated." At old St. George's town, in his 
day the centre of the life of the colony, it is easy enough to 
picture him, attending through the narrow streets some Ber- 
mudian girl, who listens, shy but amused, to the little Irish- 
man's sallies. We may not detain them. Everlastingly man 
and maid, youth and beauty, pass around the corner and out of 
sight: so have passed Tom Moore and "Nea," and sweet Bessy 

62 



:ho be'' 



di8. 



' .t8 



St. George's in i8i6 
From a print by Stadl 



Tom Moore in Bermuda 

Dyke, who before many years was to receive his hfe-long 

devotion. 

"The mossy marbles rest 
On the lips that he has prest 
In their bloom." 




63 




Cabicature Qr Moore 
'^ Thoni^- Crofton Croker 






\^^otT> wo\\o^O 7.tiSnO^\T "fS 


































•y\ "j^.- /\ \^^.- **'% K^.- /\ v^ 



^o — Dtc 1^5 




